Nearly 80 million people visit one of the Orlando area’s theme parks every year. Orlando is also a very popular convention center site, attracting tens of millions more (the Orange County Convention Center is near Universal). So if walking the parks isn’t enough and you have an opportunity to sneak out, we’ve put together this guide to running in the Walt Disney World/Universal Studios area. We also have a separate guide to Orlando. The Convention Center is 9 miles southwest of downtown Orlando and Disney is about 9 miles southwest of there.
Finding a good places to run in the Disney/Universal area take some planning, as some of the hotels inside and outside the Disney resort are on very busy roads and/or don’t have sidewalks. For the Disney area, most of the best running is on the 18+ miles of walking & running trails winding throughout the Walt Disney World Resort. These trails are generally intended for guests staying within one of the resorts, though it might be possible for some non-guests to access some of them. We’ve created posts for options within and outside the resorts, and also for the Universal Studios/Convention Center area, where there are actually better running options open to the public. We also recommend a run at Celebration, the planned community about 7 miles from Disney and near the ESPN Wide World of Sports attraction. Here’s our Orlando running guide for additional routes!
